I. plavecký klub otužilců Praha warmly invites you to the 75th edition of the Christmas swimming event in the Vltava — the Alfred Nikodem Memorial.
This long-established and celebrated cold-water swimming event takes place on Sunday 26 December 2021, Boxing Day, at 11:00 in the Vltava beside Prague’s National Theatre.
Swimmers from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Germany, England, Austria, the USA and Russia will take part. The course crosses the Vltava between Střelecký and Slovanský islands, with both start and finish on the bank of Slovanský Island. Distances are 100, 300 and 750 metres.
The Vltava will welcome leading swimmers with international honours alongside recreational cold-water swimmers, who chiefly enjoy healthy activity in winter water with like-minded friends. More than four hundred swimmers have entered this year.
The water temperature as this article is published, three days before the event, is 4.3°C. Nevertheless, the forecast suggests that swimmers are unlikely to earn their cold-water proficiency grades beside the National Theatre this year either. Those grades can only be earned in “ice water”, defined as water at or below 4°C.
For the tenth time, the organisers are including a team competition based on the results of each participating club’s three best-placed swimmers. Councillor for culture, sport and associations Petr Burgr will present the Prague 1 Mayor’s Cup in person.
All awards will again be presented in the ceremonial Small Hall of Žofín Palace. Czech Swimming Federation president Petr Ryška will attend, underlining the event’s sporting importance, and will swim the 100 metres for the third time.
Further information, especially for swimmers, is available in the programme:
- Alfred Nikodem Memorial 2021 programme (PDF, in Czech)
Instructions for participants, particularly regarding the pandemic
- Only people without clinical symptoms of COVID-19 may participate.
- People over twelve must meet one of these conditions:
– Completed vaccination: fourteen days after a second Pfizer or Moderna dose, or fourteen days after a Johnson vaccination;
– Recovery from COVID-19 after completing isolation, no more than 180 days after the first positive test.
- A PCR result no more than seven days old is accepted only for people under eighteen, people who have received at least one vaccine dose, and those with a medically documented contraindication to vaccination.
- Antigen tests and self-tests are not accepted. PCR tests are accepted only in the circumstances listed above.
- Outdoors, respiratory protection is required where more than thirty people are present and a distance of 1.5 metres cannot be maintained. Indoors, it is required whenever a distance of 1.5 metres from others cannot be maintained.
- Registration — Žofín Palace: please stay inside only as long as necessary.
Registration requirements under the public-health measures in force
- Each club team leader must bring a list of registered swimmers.
- After each name, add the applicable abbreviation for the conditions above:
vaccinated — OČK
recovered — COV
tested — PCR.
- Before registration, prepare printed evidence for each swimmer and present it for inspection. Documents will be returned after checking.
- After each swimmer’s event, add their telephone number or another unambiguous contact in case the public-health authority needs it.
Hand in the completed list at registration. The organiser will retain it for at least one month in case any issues need to be addressed.
- An on-site self-test cannot qualify you to take part. Apart from the exceptions described above, no test can qualify you.
- As the organiser must also check the infection-status evidence of visitors when more than twenty attend, team leaders must also present a list of accompanying people and their evidence, as for swimmers.
Further instructions
- Four large tents on the open area of Slovanský Island will provide changing facilities.
- The Knights’ Hall in Žofín Palace’s basement will serve as a reserve changing room, chiefly for older swimmers.
- For hygiene reasons, food will be a packaged baguette, or two cereal bars and two bananas for vegetarians; please ask at registration. We will not provide the traditional Christmas refreshments of biscuits and small dishes, also for hygiene and safety reasons, and to avoid people gathering inside Žofín Palace, particularly while eating without respirators.
- Under current government measures, the swimming will be divided into groups of no more than one hundred participants.
- The 750-metre heat will start immediately after the opening assembly, in three waves provisionally scheduled for 11:15, 11:17 and 11:19.
- Swimmers on the shorter 100- and 300-metre courses will be divided into three groups, with names displayed at the tents and changing rooms. Their approximate start times are 11:45, 12:05 and 12:25.
Slovanský Island will not disappear when the official swimming programme ends; the vaccinated and recovered participants will simply leave. Those who do not meet the conditions above, but demonstrated their medical fitness and cold-water swimming ability to the organiser before entries closed, may from approximately 12:45 make orderly, individual use of the rescue and medical cover remaining on site until 13:30. Participation certificates will be available for self-collection.
This year’s event again forms part of the Czech Union of Sport’s “Sportuj s námi” programme.
The event is also supported by SUPTel, Bytostav, Fiskars, Etewa, Born To Swim, Pražské Benátky, family jeweller JK Jitka Kudláčková, Prague City Hall and the Prague 1 district.
Cold-water swimmers’ baptism
Come along to our traditional cold-water swimmers’ baptism on Sunday 2 January 2022 at 15:00, in the Vltava channel beside the Kotva campsite in Prague-Braník (Nádraží Braník tram stop, routes 2, 3 and 17).